IN THE DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL FIRST DISTRICT, STATE OF FLORIDA BOB GRAHAM; LOU FREY, NOT FINAL UNTIL TIME EXPIRES TO JR.; TALBOT "SANDY" FILE MOTION FOR REHEARING AND D'ALEMBERTE; JOAN DISPOSITION THEREOF IF FILED RUFFIER; BRUCE W. HAUPTLI; JAMES P. JONES; CASE NO. 1D11-384 HOWARD B. ROCK; ERIC H. SHAW; MANOJ CHOPRA and FREDERICK R. STROBEL, Appellants, v. MIKE HARIDOPOLOS, PRESIDENT OF THE FLORIDA SENATE; and DEAN CANNON, SPEAKER OF THE FLORIDA HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, ON BEHALF OF THE FLORIDA LEGISLATURE , Appellees. _____________________________/ Opinion filed An appeal from the Circuit Court for Leon County. Charles A. Francis, Judge. Robin Gibson of Gibson Law Firm, Lake Wales, for Appellants. Daniel C. Brown and Christine Davis Graves of Carlton Fields, P.A., Tallahassee, for Appellees. WETHERELL, J. Appellants, citizens and taxpayers with various roles and interests in the state university system, brought a declaratory action against the presiding officers of the Legislature challenging the constitutionality of several statutes1 and a provision of the 2007-08 General Appropriations Act2 (collectively “the challenged statutes”) that restrict the universities’ expenditure of tuition and fees and condition the appropriation of funds to each university upon compliance with the tuition and fee policies established by the Legislature. The Board of Governors (Board) was originally a co-plaintiff, but it subsequently filed a notice of voluntarily dismissal of its claims and is no longer a party. The parties filed cross motions for summary judgment and the trial court granted summary judgment in favor of the Legislature. Appellants timely sought review in this court. As they did below, Appellants contend on appeal that the challenged statutes are unconstitutional because they contravene the Board’s exclusive authority under article IX, section 7(d) of the Florida Constitution to establish and expend tuition and fees. The Legislature responds that the challenged statutes are constitutional because the Board’s authority to manage the university system is subject to the Legislature’s appropriation power. We agree that the challenged statutes are constitutional and, therefore, affirm the order on appeal. 1 §§ 1011.41,1011.4106, 1011.91, Fla. Stat. (2007). 2 Ch. 2007-72, § 2, item 156, Laws of Florida. 2 In November 2002, the voters approved Amendment 11, which had been proposed by initiative petition. The amendment created article IX, section 7 of the Florida Constitution, which provides in pertinent part: SECTION 7. State University System.— (a) PURPOSES. In order to achieve excellence through teaching students, advancing research and providing public service for the benefit of Florida’s citizens, their communities and economies, the people hereby establish a system of governance for the state university system of Florida. (b) STATE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM. There shall be a single state university system comprised of all public universities. A board of trustees shall administer each public university and a board of governors shall govern the state university system. * * * (d) STATEWIDE BOARD OF GOVERNORS. The board of governors shall be a body corporate consisting of seventeen members. The board shall operate, regulate, control, and be fully responsible for the management of the whole university system. These responsibilities shall include, but not be limited to, defining the distinctive mission of each constituent university and its articulation with free public schools and community colleges, ensuring the well-planned coordination and operation of the system, and avoiding wasteful duplication of facilities or programs. The board’s management shall be subject to the powers of the legislature to appropriate for the expenditure of funds, and the board shall account for such expenditures as provided by law. The governor shall appoint to the board fourteen citizens dedicated to the purposes of the state university system. The appointed members shall be confirmed by the senate and 3 serve staggered terms of seven years as provided by law. The commissioner of education, the chair of the advisory council of faculty senates, or the equivalent, and the president of the Florida student association, or the equivalent, shall also be members of the board. (emphasis added). Appellants contend that Amendment 11 effectively transferred the power to set and expend university tuition and fees from the Legislature to the Board. Appellants acknowledge the language in the article IX, section 7(d) referring to the Legislature’s power of appropriation, but draw a distinction between general revenue funds, which they concede still fall within the Legislature’s constitutional appropriation power, and tuition and fees, which they categorize as “agency” funds within the Board’s exclusive control. We do not see any constitutional or historical basis for the distinction that Appellants ask us to draw. The Florida Constitution vests the “power of the purse” in the Legislature by granting it exclusive and plenary power to raise3 and appropriate4 state funds. See Chiles v. Children A, B, C, D, E, and F, 589 So. 2d 260, 267 (Fla. 1991) (“Under any working system of government, one of the branches must be able to exercise the power of the purse, and in our system it is the legislature, as representative of the people and maker of laws, including laws pertaining to appropriations, to 3 Art. VII, § 1(d), Fla. Const. (“Provision shall be made by law for raising sufficient revenue to defray the expenses of the state for each fiscal period.”). 4 Art. VII, § 1(c), Fla. Const. (“No money shall be drawn from the treasury except in pursuance of appropriation made by law.”). 4 whom that power is constitutionally assigned.”); State ex rel. Kurz v. Lee, 163 So. 859, 968 (Fla. 1935) (observing that the Florida Constitution gives the Legislature the “exclusive power of deciding how, when, and for what purpose the public funds shall be applied in carrying on the government”); State v. Green, 116 So. 66, 69 (Fla. 1928) (holding that “[t]he power to appropriate state funds for a lawful state purpose is legislative” and invalidating statute that purported to delegate this power by effectively giving a blank check to an executive branch entity and allowing it to fill in the amount); Cheney v Jones, 14 Fla. 587, 610 (1874) (broadly construing the Legislature’s constitutional authority to raise revenue). These powers have been vested exclusively within the legislative branch since the time of the State’s first constitution. See art. VIII, §§ 1-3, Fla. Const. (1838). The legislative power to raise funds is not limited to the imposition of taxes; it includes the power to impose fees necessary to offset the costs of using state government services. Likewise, the power of appropriation is not limited to certain types of funds; it extends to all funds in the State Treasury from whatever source. See Advisory Op. to the Governor, 200 So. 2d 534, 536 (Fla. 1967) (explaining that “the State Constitution requires legislative appropriation or authorization for the use of any funds from whatever source by a public agency or official for a public purpose”). Additionally, the appropriation power includes the authority to attach contingencies to the appropriation of funds that are reasonably related to the 5 subject of the appropriation. See Fla. Dep’t of Educ. v. Glasser, 622 So. 2d 944, 948 (Fla. 1993) (rejecting constitutional challenge to provision of appropriation bill that capped the millage that local school boards were authorized to impose because, pursuant to Brown v. Firestone, 382 So. 2d 654, 663 (Fla. 1980), “a qualification or restriction in an appropriations act will pass constitutional muster if it directly and rationally relates to the purpose of the appropriation”); Op. to the Governor, 239 So. 2d 1, 9 (Fla. 1970) (“Appropriations may constitutionally be made contingent upon matters or events reasonably related to the subject of the appropriation, but may not be made to depend upon entirely unrelated events.”). University tuition and fees are unquestionably state funds; they are collected by state universities for the use of their services and the monies collected are deposited into the State Treasury. See § 215.31, Fla. Stat. (requiring all revenue received under the authority of state law to be deposited into the State Treasury and then credited to the appropriate fund). The fact that the tuition and fees are deposited into a trust fund rather than the General Revenue Fund has no bearing on the Legislature’s plenary authority over those monies because a trust fund is, at its essence, nothing more than an accounting tool used to segregate monies within the State Treasury. See § 215.32, Fla. Stat.; Secretary of State v. Milligan, 704 So. 2d 152, 158 (Fla. 1st DCA 1997) (noting that a trust fund “merely segregates or earmarks funds” and holding that, when a trust fund is terminated but its funding 6 source remains, the monies collected must be deposited in the General Revenue Fund). In light of these principles, the validity of the challenged statutes boils down to whether Amendment 11 divested the Legislature of its “power of the purse” over state university tuition and fees by vesting that authority in the Board. Like the trial court, we see nothing in the language of Amendment 11 or its history that would suggest that such a fundamental change in the Legislature’s power was intended or effectuated. Article IX, section 7(d) provides that the Board is “fully responsible for the management of the whole university system.” But this provision also makes clear that the Board’s management of the university system is “subject to the powers of the legislature to appropriate for the expenditure of funds.” Id. This express subrogation of the Board’s management authority to the Legislature’s appropriation power, coupled with the absence of any language in article IX, section 7 referring to tuition and fee setting,5 undermines Appellants’ argument that the intent of this provision was to grant the Board such authority.